Friday, August 27, 2010

17th Ramadhan 1431 Hijri

Bismillah.

Jumaah Mubarrak! May this day bring us plenty of opportunity to multiply our ibadah. May we be granted makrifah and rahmah.

While many of us strive to multiply our ibadah in this holy month of Ramadhan we should be wary to not fall into error thinking that it is 'our ibadah', it is our effort. Anything good we do is a blessing, a gift from Allah, not because we are powerful, pious, strong, saintly or intelligent. Yet our duty is to just do. Do but renounce our actions. Otherwise, we might fall into shirik and end up idolizing ourselves, our capabilities. Shirik is the opposite of unity because we are claiming duality instead of the oneness of His being - tawhid.

Tawhid is what makes us different from the non-Muslims. Tawhid is not by default nor it is a by-product, that it will be there so long as we perform our religious obligations. Tawhid is a constant consciousness that we are not and He is. It is the foundation of Islam which is greatly emphasized. Ponder over what Shaykh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani has to say below. That tawhid is the foundation upon which we build all sorts of good structure, 'super-structure' of amal salih, righteous deeds. So build your deeds on Him not on yourself. I think if we were to get it right, we would be building one, single, giant house of Allah instead of many individual temples of worship. Wallahu'alam.

"You must practise surrender (taslim) and delegation (tafwid) and the renunciation of your own power and strength, your stubbornness and your idolatrous worship (shirk) of creatures and your own self. You must become accustomed to servitude ('ubudiyya) which means carrying out the (divine) commandments, observing the prohibitions and bearing misfortunes with patience. The foundation on which this rests is the affirmation of Unity (tawhid) and the superstructure consists of righteous deeds (a'mal saliha). You need to lay a firm foundation for anything you build."